Ethnicity

©Haberlah
Nubian people (Sudan)

We have a good idea of how the ancient Nubians looked like for they have depicted themselves in numerous wall reliefs, paintings, and scultures, as well as from the anthropological studies of fossils. Accordingly, it is certain that ancient Nubians look almost typical to the modern day people of Northern Sudan.¹

Mummy of
Nubian girl.

According to the Table of Nations (part of the Biblical story of Noah) Kush was the one of the sons of Ham and the father of the Kushites or the Nubians. The modern Nubian language, which is traditionally identified as Afro-Asiatic, has been recently classified as an Eastern Sudanic language, different from Meroitic and Afro-Asiatic. The latter was used as a term of classification for the group of languages spoken by indigenous North African groups such as the Beja, Amazigh (or Berbers ), and the ancient Egyptians. Eastern Sudanic constitute a branch of Nilo-Saharan, the language family shared by populations of the Middle Nile and adjacent regions in the Sahara.

The Nubian language was originally spoken by the Nobadian (or Nubian) populations that migrated to the Nile Valley from northern areas of the Libyan desert sometime in the third century CE and intermixed with the older Kushite population.

However, genetic research indicates the modern Nubians to be an indigenous entity.² It is widely suggested that the material culture of the modern human population that emigrated “out of Africa” during the Middle Paleolithic, had originated in Nubia.³ Many of the earliest modern human tool industries and techniques originated in Nubia including the Nubian Levallois technique for producing pointed flakes, bifacial foliates, and pedunculates.⁴

In any case, the Nubians are certainly indigenous of the Nile valley in Sudan and they are the direct ancestors of the vast majority of modern Sudanese people.

• ^{1 P. F. Service, The Ancient African Kingdom of Kush (Cultures of the Past) (New York: Benchmark Books, 1998) 56.}
• ^{2 M. Krings, A. Salem, K. Bauer, H. Geisert, A. Malek, L. Chaix, C. Simon, D. Welsby, A. Di Rienzo, G. Utermann, A. Sajantila, S. Pääbo, and M. Stoneking, "MtDNA Analysis of Nile River Valley Populations: A Genetic Corridor or a Barrier to Migration?" Am J Hum Genet 64 (1999): 1166-76.}
• ^{3 P. Van Peer, “The Nile corridor and the Out-of-Africa Model, An examination of the archaeological record,” Current Anthropology 39 (1998), P. Van Peer, “Methodological approaches of lithic analysis,” Palaeolithic Quarrying Sites in Middle and Upper Egypt, ed. M. Pierre, Leuven University P, Leuven.}
• ^{4 P. M. Vermeersch, "'Out of Africa' from an Egyptian point of view," Quaternary International 75 (2001): 103-12, and for more on the Levallois technique see: B. Midant-Reynes, and I. Shaw, The Prehistory of Egypt: From the First Egyptians to the First Pharaohs, trans. I. Shaw (Blackwell Publishing, 2000).}